New York, NY—Teachers College, Columbia University (TC), announced the appointment of Ezekiel Dixon-Román, Ph.D., as Professor of Critical Race, Media and Educational Studies in the Department of Curriculum and Teaching, as well as director of the College’s Edmund W. Gordon Institute for Urban and Minority Education for a five-year term. Both positions are effective January 1, 2023.
Professor Dixon-Román is a visiting professor within the Gordon Institute for the Fall 2022 term, and will deliver the College’s Gordon-Sachs Lecture on February 7, 2023. He joins TC from the University of Pennsylvania, where he was Associate Professor, Director of the Master of Science in Social Policy Program, and Chair of the Data Analytics for Social Policy Certificate Program. His research and work focus on examining and deconstructing how power and inequity are reproduced via technologies of quantification. Specifically, he considers quantification in education through a critical lens and explores how alternatives to current practices may improve “sociopolitical relations and the movement and flow of social life.”
“We are so pleased to welcome Ezekiel Dixon-Román to Teachers College,” said William Baldwin, Interim Provost, Dean and Vice President for Academic Affairs. “The Edmund W. Gordon Institute for Urban and Minority Education is at the forefront of TC’s to promote equity, inclusion and social justice, and Professor Dixon-Román will bring an important focus on the intersections of race, power and technology to his role as a faculty member and as director of the Gordon Institute. I know that our entire community will benefit from his vision, scholarship and leadership. I would also like to thank Professor Erica Walker, the outgoing director of the Gordon Institute, for her unyielding work and commitment to Teachers College and the Gordon institute and its goal of making education more accessible and equitable.”
As Director of the Gordon Institute, Professor Dixon-Román will carry on the legacy of groundbreaking leaders and scholars who have developed innovative research and programs to improve educational and life outcomes for people of color in urban areas. He succeeds Erica Walker, Clifford Brewster Upton Professor of Mathematical Education, who will become Dean of the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE) at the University of Toronto, in January 2023.
The Edmund W. Gordon Institute for Urban and Minority Education, which will celebrate its 50th anniversary in 2023, is one of the first university-based institutes devoted to designing research and programs to improve educational and life outcomes for people of color in urban areas. The Institute was founded by Edmund W. Gordon, the Richard March Hoe Professor Emeritus of Psychology & Education at TC, in 1973.
“It is an honor to join the faculty of Teachers College, and lead the Edmund W. Gordon Institute for Urban and Minority Education,” said Professor Dixon-Román. “The passion and energy of TC faculty, students and staff are inspiring, and I look forward to collaborating across TC to build on the College’s commitment to equity and the Gordon Insitute’s legacy to strengthen and expand educational opportunities for urban marginalized communities and racialized populations.”
Under Professor Walker’s exemplary leadership over the past five years, the Gordon Institute has expanded significantly, both in terms of engaged faculty affiliates, graduate students, and fellows, but also in securing substantial external grants and gifts in support of its research and development projects as well as graduate student funding. Professor Dixon-Román will continue that work, and build on Walker's successful efforts to expand public-private partnerships in Harlem and nearby communities; to develop and sustain collaborative initiatives with national organizations as well as TC, Columbia, and community partners; and to bring public engagement opportunities to the TC community and broader public through lectures, forums and other forms of public scholarship such as exhibits and podcasts. He will work in collaboration with Sonali Rajan, Associate Professor of Health Education, who joined the Gordon Institute as Senior Associate Director on September 1.
Dixon-Román is the author of Inheriting Possibility: Social Reproduction & Quantification in Education, winner of the 2018 Outstanding Book Award from the American Educational Research Association, and co-editor, along with Dr. Edmund W. Gordon, of Thinking Comprehensively About Education: Spaces of Educative Possibility and Their Implications for Public Policy. He has co-guest edited four special issues of academic publications and published more than two dozen articles on the topics of Black studies, cybernetics, new materialisms, governmentality and biopolitics. He holds a Bachelor of Arts from North Carolina Central University, a Master of Arts from University of Chicago, and a Master of Arts and Doctorate of Philosophy from Fordham University.
For more information on the Edmund W. Gordon Institute for Urban and Minority Education, visit HERE.
About Teachers College, Columbia University
Founded in 1887, Teachers College, Columbia University, the first and largest graduate school of education in the United States, is perennially ranked among the nation’s best. Teachers College’s mission is to create a smarter, healthier, and more equitable and peaceful world. Teachers College engages in research and prepares professionals in its three main areas of expertise—education, health and psychology—to work with public and private entities in local, national and global communities and inform public policy. Students choose from among 150 separate programs to earn graduate degrees, which are conferred by Columbia University. While it is closely affiliated with Columbia University and collaborates with it on many programs, the College is an independent, autonomous institution with a separate, independent governing board, president, and financial endowment.